L4Ka::Pistachio version 0.1

The L4Ka team is pleased to announce the first release of the L4Ka::Pistachio microkernel. L4Ka::Pistachio is the latest L4 microkernel developed by the System Architecture Group at the University of Karlsruhe, Germany, in collaboration with the DISY group at the University of New South Wales, Australia. It is the first available kernel implementation of the L4 Version 4 kernel API.

L4Ka is from Karlsruhe (hence the Ka). Karlsruhe is also the place where Jochen Liedtke held a professorhip until he tragically died two years ago. Karlsruhe is therfore very much associated with L4. You’re right in that one particular implementation (Fiasco) was developed in Dresden, though.

2003-05-03 2:42 am

quote

Within the next few weeks we are going to release L4Linux 2.4.20 which

has support for L4Ka::Pistachio/ia32 (besides the old V2 and X.0

APIs).

Since I am not an expert in the field of kernel development can someone explain this bit from the mailing list. What is it exactly that they are going to do?

Thanks in advance.

2003-05-03 1:39 pm

L4Linux is linux kernel run in user-mode as an ordinary process which calls L4 microkernel to get basic kernel services like memory management and multitasking. Other processes call this “linux kernel” via interprocess communication.

2003-05-03 3:17 pm

What is the purpose of this, what can it be used for?

What is the base kernel, is it Linux or the microkernel?

2003-05-04 7:16 pm

In this way the “base kernel” is L4, which can guarantee hard RT schedules, preempting the linux “process”, which a fully vanilla linux system wouldn’t be to do.